


Steal

by TheBlindBandit



Series: Fall [1]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, First Meetings, Homeworld Hierarchy (Steven Universe), Pre-Canon, Secret Relationship, Sneaking Around, Swords, or the beginnings thereof, pre-rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:09:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9421973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBlindBandit/pseuds/TheBlindBandit
Summary: Rose doesn't know what she wants.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Something of a prelude to [Reach Down](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8762329).

Rose wants a pearl.

That’s what they insist on ribbing her about, the others. Half the quartz barracks, it feels like, find out everything about each and every new development within a single meagre planetary rotation. _Itching for a fight,_ they say, _for a conquest, for war, to prove herself, to earn for herself a pretty, dainty reward._

Except that isn’t true at all.

Rose wants White Diamond’s pearl.

 _Setting your sights a bit high, Rose,_ they say, with mock concern, _a bit above your rank, that one - that one is **fancy**_. _Even if they were to give you a pearl, it wouldn’t be anything like the one you keep staring at._ A thousand elaborate scenarios are devised and shared, between guffaws, in the pink barracks training courtyard - of Rose stealing into the heart of White Diamond’s court and making off with the pearl she seems so besotted with. Even the rowdiest among them are aware and careful enough that the talk never reaches anyone above fellow quartzes and for that, at least, Rose is grateful.

Except she doesn’t want this - the pearl - at all, not really. Or… at least, not like she thinks she’s _supposed_ to. She’s entertained certain thoughts, she can’t deny (and she’s never been a very good liar). She’s become familiar with what can only be envy - that was allowed, surely? That was one of the reasons pearls were created, wasn’t it? But even a cursory examination of her odd, muddled feelings and state of mind let her know she doesn’t covet a pretty thing to show off, a living status symbol, a decorative trinket to obey her every whim, at all.

She plays along as much as she can, but she keeps the most important parts, the parts she can’t even begin to understand, to herself.

(She’s never been a very good liar - except, perhaps, by omission.)

She doesn’t tell anyone of the times she’s seen this very pearl sneak around. She doesn’t tell anyone of the almost-encounters, of glimpses of pearlescent white in darkened side passages and narrow servants’ hallways while only one of the twin suns hung in the sky, of a pearl rushing away with a sword she wasn’t carrying for any master but herself.

She keeps their one very real encounter to herself: the feeling of that same blade against her throat, trembling only slightly, and a whispered threat of _You can’t tell anyone. Swear you won’t tell! I can get you in trouble, I can tell Her you tried to steal me-_ , of wide, terrified eyes with both tears and steel in them, of _Nobody would believe you anyway. I was just- I was taking this sword to the smithy._ And yes, the sword is an ancient wreck badly in need of maintenance, a weapon that nobody would ever think to miss. And yes, the pearl is pretty and elegant and finely dressed and all the hundreds of things she’s supposed to be, but she’s also a hundred more things besides, and, above all, in that moment she is _terrifying_.

Rose omits.

And she doesn’t think how she’s never touched a pearl before, though that is certainly true and she’s always kept her distance, often under pain of shattering. She thinks, instead, _this is the first time she’s touched me_. She doesn’t know why it grates to think it’s supposed - it _has_ to be the last time, too. She wants to know more. She wants to revisit the feeling of the long and startlingly firm fingers gripping her arm as relentlessly as they grip a hilt, the strength of a coiled spring barely contained in a figure looking just as ready to pounce and attack as to launch into a pirouette. But she wants those eyes to meet hers again, with something less than threat and more like trust, and she wants to feel, too, what the short, downy hair on Pearl’s head is like when it’s ruffled, when the deliciously illicit swordfighting practice has it all out of place.

The pearl became _Pearl_ at some point, and when Rose’s barracks-mates catch her talking about her like that they laugh, because of course there’s only one pearl on Rose’s mind, isn’t there? No need to specify, they’ve all seen her moping, and if she wants, they can swap patrol assignments so her rounds take her closer to White Diamond’s chambers.

Rose wants Pearl, but she also doesn’t, and she doesn’t know what to call any of it. The idea of having Pearl and having her trot behind her and _obey_ seems strangely wrong - and yet she still feels like she would happily fight White Diamond herself for the privilege. Above all she has no clue what to do about it, if anything, especially because Pearl seems to want a great many things herself, and _that_ doesn’t even slightly enter into the realm of expected or acceptable.

So she sneaks out, again, and startles Pearl, again, despite all of her best efforts at going unnoticed.

“What are you doing here? What do you want with me?” Pearl asks, with an audible tremor in her voice, and Rose has no idea how to even begin to explain.

She takes a long look at the ruined blade of the sword Pearl is clutching, still half-caught up in an admirable battle-ready stance, remembers the long line of fresh, polished, barely-used weapons in the barracks armoury that never get properly counted, and before she can truly think she finds herself saying:

“I can get you a better sword.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Give](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9669575) by [DrJekyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrJekyl/pseuds/DrJekyl)
  * [[PODFIC] Steal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10242017) by [Kitsune_Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitsune_Heart/pseuds/Kitsune_Heart)




End file.
